I might be wrong in assuming that many of my readers love Downton Abbey, but it seems like the kind of show that goes hand-in-hand with a love of classics. The spouse and I and even the toddler love it, although she was concerned when Lady Sibyl was caught up in that riot over the elections in season 1. (We stepped up the fast-forwarding after that.)
Over winter break I read Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey. I found it as a Kindle library book after spotting a paper copy at Barnes & Noble. It was really a fun read and makes a lot of little things in season 3 clearer.
For those of you new to this party, Downton Abbey is filmed at Highclere Castle, and the show appears loosely based on the early-20th-century exploits of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, especially the fifth earl. He's the Lord Carnavon who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, although not without spending a fortune and contracting a deadly case of blood poisoning.
His wife Lady Almina was the daughter of her mother's lover Alfred de Rothschild, whose fortune assisted in the establishment of a hospital at Highclere Castle during World War I.
The book, by the current Countess of Carnarvon, Fiona Aitken, is solid in the history of the period, but kept from dryness by her affection for Lady Almina and her editorializing about her predecessor's foibles ("Alfred occasionally used to remonstrate gently with Almina, saying, 'Oh, puss-cat, I gave you ten thousand pounds only last week. Whatever have you don with it, my darling child?' But he never refused her; he simply took out his chequebook and unscrewed the lid of his pen." [124])
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